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JAPAN
May 23, 2008

Whale meat being sold before OK: Greenpeace

Whale meat from Japan's processing ship Nisshin Maru is being illegally sold prior to the official government release of whale stocks, activists from the environmental group Greenpeace charged Thursday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 23, 2008

Descending into the somber history of a once-glittering prize

It's a balmy spring day in Shimane Prefecture, but one step into the newly reopened Okubo Shaft of the Iwami silver mine and your body is enveloped by the darkness and the cold. In these eerie surroundings, it's not hard to imagine encountering the ghosts of the miners whose labor helped reshape Japan...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / LIQUID CULTURE
May 23, 2008

Bottled water: It's naughty, but nice

I know, I know, bottled water is terribly unethical these days. Pinching a natural, life-sustaining resource and flying it to rich people in faraway lands is a bit naughty, all that packaging is trashing our planet, and our taps dispense safe water for less than ¥1 per liter — or a little more than...
Reader Mail
May 22, 2008

Struggling with a dying art

In his May 18 letter, Grant Piper makes some very good remarks on letter writing in Japan. Letter writing is a dying art. I think quantity and varying quality is a good thing and allows for more varied opinions. It also does not exclude anyone based on someone else's prejudices. The problem with The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2008

Rwandan troupe investigates societies' failures

I n 1994, Hutu militias began the systematic genocide of the Tutsi people of Rwanda. In just 100 days, an estimated 1 million people had been butchered and whole families, villages and towns destroyed. Once Tutsi rebels regrouped and took control of the unstable country, many of the Hutus responsible...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2008

Winding up in bondage

Consider, for a moment, tattoos. Removable and temporary tattoos are gaining in popularity. But there goes the whole cachet of tattoos, really. The very reason they're worth having is, in fact, the ordeal you go through to get them and the finality of the decision. Therein lies the line that separates...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2008

A life on the streets

'I'm not always a stray dog. Sometimes I'm a cat," says Daido Moriyama. "Or an insect."
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
May 21, 2008

Twitter launch in Japanese a boon for microblogging

Twitter is the Web site and service on a lot of lips in the technology world right now. It is a service that serves one very simple function by letting its users answer a simple question, "What are you doing now?" Users then subscribe to these answers by "following" the accounts of other users. The result...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
May 20, 2008

Anti-crime color balls

Dear Alice, I've spotted pairs of plastic Day-Glo orange baseballs sitting in polystyrene containers behind the counter at banks and convenience stores. My friend reckons they have them in police stations too. Can you please tell us what the heck they are?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 20, 2008

Tachikawa Three claim ruling marks 'crisis for Japan and its democracy'

Prisoners of conscience, communists, antiwar activists, martyrs for Japan's tottering pacifist Constitution: Toshiyuki Obora, Nobuhiro Onishi and Sachimi Takada have been called many things since February 2004, and worse besides.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 20, 2008

U.K. home-schoolers come to Tokyo for robot comp

Donning T-shirts of all colors and designs, some of the world's brightest science-minded boys and girls met in Tokyo in late April for the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Open Asian Championship, an international robotics competition for children aged 9 to 15.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2008

If there is a god, then why is there suffering?

Do we live in a world that was created by a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing and all good?
JAPAN
May 19, 2008

Japan team finds bodies at school

BEICHUAN, China — The search by a Japanese relief team for signs of life turned into a grim recovery of bodies Sunday at a school in one of the hardest-hit areas of last week's earthquake in western China.
Reader Mail
May 18, 2008

A little slack for letter-writers

M. Randolph's May 4 letter, "Improve content, including letters," and A. Charles Muller's May 8 letter, "Use fewer letters when quality lags," both agree that my letter-writing is an example of how NOT to write an opinion letter, citing lack of supporting ideas or clear logic. Sticks and stones! Letters...
EDITORIALS
May 18, 2008

Natural disaster relief system

The cyclone in Myanmar and earthquake in China are grim reminders of how neighbors need to help one another. Asian countries have a duty to offer assistance to one another, and to accept it. The refusal of aid by the military junta in Myanmar exposes citizens to more suffering than necessary. In the...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 18, 2008

Japan affords translators an elevated status not found elsewhere

Here's a little quiz for you.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / WEEK 3
May 18, 2008

Handsome is not enough: beauticians make the man

Perhaps no words send shivers down a company employee's back more than when your boss gravely tells you that he'd "like to have a chat with you." So, when mine at the English-language conversation school that I was teaching at said this to me a few years ago, my heart sank to the ground.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 18, 2008

Period-piece thriller, historical marriage drama, family-business soap opera

"Nihonshi Suspense Gekijo" (Japanese History Suspense Theater; Nihon TV, Wed., 7:58 p.m.) offers something to both lovers of historical dramas and fans of those two-hour mysteries used to fill holes in network schedules. Basically, the producers take a real incident from Japanese history and turn it...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / WEEK 3
May 18, 2008

The beauty of the afterworld

At a funeral, if your loved one in the coffin appears as if they are simply sleeping peacefully, it may alleviate your grief.
Reader Mail
May 18, 2008

Homelessness in both countries

Regarding the May 13 article "Team Japan faces huge hurdles on road to Homeless World Cup": I applaud The Japan Times for covering the topic of homelessness. It is a serious issue affecting many people in Japan as well as the United States. It is tragic that there exists such biased attitudes toward...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
May 17, 2008

Portsmouth-Cardiff City F.A. Cup final fails to inspire

LONDON — No matter how much purists try to argue that it sums up the magic of the F.A. Cup, regardless of the "ideal" David vs. Goliath matchup and, to the relief of some, the fact that none of the Big Four clubs is involved, the final between Portsmouth and Cardiff City is the least interesting most...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 17, 2008

Buddha's birthday prompts call to temple

May 12 was Buddha's birthday. Don't tell me you forgot about it! You didn't even send a card? How about a gift? Well, don't feel too bad. I forgot about it too. But luckily, on the morning of the 12th, an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying "Attention Shiraishi Island residents, today is Buddha's...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 17, 2008

Marriage sprang from struggle to master Japanese

May Uehara, who came to Japan from Hong Kong in 1986, speaks Japanese with such perfect intonation that people may at first mistake her for a native.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2008

What if Barack Obama were a real Muslim?

LOS ANGELES — A significant number of West Virginians (and some others in America) evidently take the view that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. In a surpassingly depressing report from the coal-miner state on the eve of Tuesday's West Virginia primary, The Los...
SOCCER / J. League
May 16, 2008

Okada unveils Kirin Cup squad

Japan manager Takeshi Okada called up Celtic playmaker Shunsuke Nakamura for the first time Thursday as he prepares for June's do-or-die World Cup qualifying matches with two friendly matches later this month.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?